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"What was the price did Father Christmas's sled cost? Nothing, it was on the house."

This one-liner is met by groans that resonate through a warehouse in the capital.

This describes a humor-evaluation meeting with a firm that produces products for social events. Its catalogue includes Christmas crackers.

The firm's owner smiles, nearly apologetically at the joke. But the pun has made the cut and will feature in future crackers.

"The success is gauged by the gag by the volume of groans and the loudness of the groans around the table," the founder explains.

The key to a great holiday cracker pun is not the same as a good joke per se. It is entirely about the context - in this case, the communal laughter of the Christmas dinner table with elders, kids and potentially neighbours.

"You want the joke to be something that unites the child together with the 80-year-old," she adds.

The Science Of Communal Amusement

Coming together to enjoy communal laughter is not only nothing new, experts say, it is probably to be older than humanity.

"So when you are laughing with others at the Christmas table you are dropping into what's almost certainly a truly primordial mammal play vocalisation," explains a professor.

Communal laughter, she explains, aids in forge and strengthen social bonds between people.

Scientists have found that a lack of such interactions can seriously damage both psychological and bodily health.

"Those you talk to, and share laughter with, it results in increased amounts of endorphin uptake," she adds.

Endorphins are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to reduce tension and discomfort and in response to pleasurable activities, such as chuckling with loved ones over a particularly awful Christmas cracker joke.

"It's not simply laughing at a foolish joke with a holiday cracker," the expert says. "You are in fact performing a lot of the really vital work of building, preserving the connections you have with the people you love."

What Happens Inside the Mind?

But what is truly taking place inside the mind when we hear a gag?

An awful lot happens in reaction to comedy, it transpires.

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of brain scanner which shows which parts of the mind are more active, scientists have been able to chart the regions that get more blood flow.

Testing involves scanning the brains of healthy subjects and then exposing them to a collection of humorous phrases, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or recorded laughter.

"During the study we observed a really interesting activation pattern of neural activity," notes the neuroscientist.

A gag stimulates not just the parts of the brain responsible for hearing and interpreting language, but also brain regions involved in both preparation and initiating movement and those involved in vision and recall.

Combine all of this together, and individuals listening to a joke have a sophisticated set of brain responses that support the laughter we experience.

The Contagious Power of Laughter

Scientists discovered that when a funny word is combined with chuckles there is a stronger response in the mind than the same word when accompanied by a neutral sound.

"This was in parts of the mind that you would use to move your expression into a grin or a chuckle," the professor explains.

It means we are not just responding to humorous words, they are responding to the amusement that accompanies them.

Amusement, according to the expert, can be contagious.

So what does this mean for the chuckles heard at a holiday table?

"People laugh harder when you are familiar with others," she notes, "and you laugh further when you like them or love them."

When it comes to festive cracker jokes, she says, the feel-good factor is more probable to be caused not by the gag in itself, but from the response to it.

"It's the laughter. The joke is the terrible Christmas cracker pun, and it's just a reason to laugh together."

The Quest for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Is it possible to find the perfect joke?

Likely not, but that has not stopped researchers from attempting to.

In 2001, a professor set up a scientific project for the planet's funniest joke.

Over tens of thousands of jokes submitted, with scores provided by 350,000 participants around the world, he has a better understanding than many as to what works and what fails.

The ideal Christmas cracker joke needs to be short, he explains.

"They must also be poor gags, puns that cause us to moan," he continues.

The increasingly "terrible" the gag, he states the better.

"The reason is that if no-one laughs – it's the gag's fault, not yours.

"The fascinating part about the Christmas cracker puns is that none of us considers them humorous.

"It creates a shared experience at the gathering and I believe it's wonderful."